Casey (2022:151-152) – margens emocionais

As margens emocionais são internas a uma dada emoção ou externas em termos da sua relação com outros processos experienciais. As emoções parecem muitas vezes amorfas e sem nome; são famosamente fugazes, notoriamente difíceis de determinar, mudando continuamente de forma, direção e força — uma característica discutida no próximo capítulo como elasticidade. Foi uma dor genuína que senti aquando da morte de um amigo próximo (pela pura perda) ou foi uma desolação terrível (sentimento de abandono) — ou talvez as duas coisas ao mesmo tempo? Onde é que uma começa e a outra acaba? Será possível dizer onde começa e onde acaba uma emoção? É por ser tão difícil de determinar que, muitas vezes, só conseguimos dar uma ideia aproximada da origem e do fim de uma emoção que estamos a viver ou que já vivemos. Na maior parte das vezes, as emoções entram e saem de fases em trechos contínuos das nossas vidas, e raramente são o conteúdo completo ou o foco único da nossa experiência, exceto em momentos de grande carga. Essas fases de entrada/saída são marcadas por margens, na medida em que as identificamos como momentos "iniciais" ou "finais" de uma experiência emocional, sendo alguns desses momentos abruptos, outros mais suavemente transitórios — e todos com os seus próprios perfis marginais. Concentremo-nos em dois aspectos em que a margem e a emoção estão intimamente relacionados: em primeiro lugar, que as emoções não só têm margens como são elas próprias fenômenos marginais (uma distinção abordada pela primeira vez no capítulo 5) e, em segundo lugar, aquilo a que chamo "carregamento emocional frontal".

Emotional edges are either internal to a given emotion or external in terms of its relation with other experiential processes. Emotions often appear amorphous and nameless; they are famously fleeting, notoriously difficult to pin down, changing shape and direction and force continuously—a feature discussed in the next chapter as elasticity. Was it genuine grief I felt at the death of a close friend (at the sheer loss) or was it dire desolation (feeling abandoned)—or perhaps both at once? Where does one begin and the other end? Can one ever say just where any emotion starts and finishes? It is because this is so difficult to determine that we often can give only an approximate account of the origin and termination of an emotion we are undergoing or have undergone. For the most part, emotions phase in and out of ongoing stretches of our lives, and are rarely the entire [152] content or single focus of our experience except during highly charged moments. Such in/out phasings are edged to the extent that we identify them as “early” or “late” moments of an emotional experience, some of these moments being abrupt, others more smoothly transitional—and all bearing their own edge profiles. Let us focus on two respects in which edge and emotion are closely related: first, that emotions not   only have edges but are themselves edge phenomena (a distinction first broached in chapter 5), and second, what I call “emotional front-loading.”

Emotions are experienced as edgeless only when—as sometimes happens, as with certain moods—they are entirely diffuse; but most emotions do possess their own distinctive edges, internal and external. This happens with many mundane instances of emotional upset—say, over my partner’s seeming neglect at a delicate moment. The opening edge of this upset may be felt at first as a growing apprehension; but then this blossoms quickly into an angry verbal outburst at her when I say suddenly, “How can you do this to me?” These words proceed right out of the incipient edge of my anger. The outburst and its sharp edges are closely interwoven with the earlier phase, in which I sensed myself being neglected when I craved for more attention. The edges of this feeling of neglect are contiguous with those of my overt display of anger: the earlier edges gave way to the later edges in an affective sweep, folding into them, yet they are experientially differentiated. Not only do emotions possess their own experienced edges at various stages of the emergence of a given emotion; they are at one with these edges: indeed, they are these edges even as the emotion itself evolves. In this respect, to be emotional is to be on edge—an edge that is characteristic of the emotion I am feeling or expressing at the time. The fact that earlier and later phases of a given emotion connect in characteristic ways contributes directly to the emergent identity of the emotion itself, contributing to its distinctive overall gestalt, the form of my anger on this occasion. (This form is both a generic kind—in this case, “anger,” of which there are many species—as well as reflecting the way I experience and express that emotion in my own idiosyncratic way.)